Have you tried TDD? Do you hate it? Do you have a hard time applying it in practice? Do you find it promoting bad design decisions because you must write micro tests instead of looking at the big picture? Are your tests tightly coupled to the implementation due to a lot of mocking making refactoring a pain? Do tons of tests break when a simple change is made? Do you have a hard time justifying all the time spent on writing tests vs. just focusing on development?

You are not alone. Every organization or team that I run into is supposedly Agile. Some are also applying agile engineering practices such as automated unit, integration and acceptance testing, etc… However, many struggle with TDD. TDD is hard, seems counter-intuitive and requires a lot of investment. Come to this session for a TDD reboot. We will look at the benefits of TDD, discuss the resistance to TDD and uncover some common difficulties along with misconceptions. We will then address these misunderstandings and explore different approaches to making TDD easier. Leave with a fresh perspective and new insights on how to become better at TDD and apply it with ease.

Outline/Structure of the Talk

The material for this talk is based on my experience coaching teams on TDD as well as from teaching TDD as part of the Certified Scrum Developer class. The main points of the talk are: 1. TDD is not about testing; It’s about emergent design2. TDD is not just done using unit testing. It involves all levels including unit, integration, acceptance, etc…3. Write tests based on behaviors (BDD) of the requirements not the detail technical implementation4. Understanding the unit of isolation and when to drive outside-in vs. inside-out5. Use a classical testing approach and minimize the use of mocking

Agenda:

Intro (2 min)

Unit Testing – The basics (5 min)

TDD – The basics (5 min)

Misconceptions and pushback (8 min)

Too much time is spent on writing tests vs. developing code

Writing tests before the code is counter-intuitive

TDD is good for junior devs but senior/more experienced devs don’t need it

TDD ignores the big picture and focuses on micro-design

Not everything is testable

Mocking leads to tightly coupled test/implementation

I can always write the tests later

Refactoring is a pain because many tests fail when a simple change is made

Test suites are difficult to maintain

Benefits of TDD (7 min)

Avoid over engineering/architecting

Develop APIs and clean SOLID code

Quick feedback loop

Catch silly mistakes

Have safety net for refactoring

Write testable code

Free regression test suite

Provide code documentation

TDD Time Fallacy (3 min)

TDD and BDD (2 min)

Test Doubles (5 min)

Classical vs. Mockist Testing (5 min)

Summary (3 min)

Learning Outcome

• List TDD benefits

• Explain TDD misconceptions

• Give examples of using TDD at different levels of unit, integration, and acceptance

• Identify situations when Mocks are appropriate and when they are not

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Paul Boos / George Paci - DevOps Your Organizational Change

schedule 2 months ago

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45 Mins

Workshop/Game

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Fadi Stephan - We Do Scrum But...

schedule 1 month ago

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45 Mins

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Fadi Stephan - 5 Steps to a Successful Agile Transformation

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45 Mins

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